NTR Nets €96m In Waste Firm Sale
Irish Examiner : June 10 2010
By Conor Keane, Business Editor
NTR plc is to net €96 million from the sale of its waste management business Greenstar UK – the company plans to keep its Irish and US Greenstar branded waste businesses.
However, the sell-off of the British waste businesses to Montagu Private Equity and Global Infrastructure Partners, the controlling shareholders of British industrial waste company Biffa, for a total of £135m (€162m) re-emphasises the morphing of NTR into an international renewable energy group. The business being sold on had reported sales of £145m (€175.50m) in 2009.
NTR makes no bones about how they will use the €96m it will earn from the deal and said the cash is to be used to “both fortify cash reserves and strategically invest in other areas of its clean energy and resource sustaining portfolio”.
The deal is subject to regulatory approvals. “With a range of growth opportunities to exploit, the group concluded that its UK waste management business would provide greater value to NTR shareholders through a sale at this point,” the company said.
It said the decision does not affect NTR’s Irish and US-based Greenstar businesses. It said these will continue to play a critical role in the business.
“Greenstar UK is on the cusp of significant further growth opportunities and with competing demands for resources from the other parts of our portfolio, this transaction both releases substantial cash reserves for NTR and opens up new sources of funding for Greenstar UK,” NTR chief executive Jim Barry said.
“The quality of our portfolio continues to attract significant interest from leading debt providers and potential equity partners, even in this most difficult funding environment, providing us with a wide range of options to pursue,” concluded Jim Barry.
NTR has changed course from being a developer and operator of road infrastructure in Ireland to a developer and operator of renewable energy – wind, solar and ethanol – and sustainable waste management businesses in the USA, Britain, and Ireland. The group employs 4,100 people.
Greenstar UK operations provide recycling waste management with a fleet of 569 waste trucks collecting from 23 local authorities and over 900,000 homes, employing 2,000 people.